Disclaimer: Rockman Battle Network, Megaman NT Warrior and all related trademarks © Capcom. Call © Comcept/Intl Creates. Elements like the Songbirds and all other unique characters to this fanfiction universe are not covered by this copyright.
Author's Note: I will state that Call and her variants will have names based on communication and transmission, and keep your ear open for certain habits over one particular name. You'll catch something very early if you spot it. A good clue is that one country has different ways of saying the same thing sometimes to others. Also, This story was written without the knowledge of Cache and Phantom Navis, but I actually hit upon the basics of their origins pretty well, and Cache may well appear.
Locations in the network have a rather poor reception to FFn's insistence that anything that looks vaguely like a URL gets deleted, so I've done my best there.
Songbird Battle Network
Disc 1 File 1: The Truth About Mayl Sakurai
Mayl groaned as she got up, her watch beeping in annoyance. She didn't want to be seen like this, she never had, but she hadn't been truly healthy for as long as she could remember. Most people loved their birthday. Mayl had successfully managed to move her birthday celebration to a day a few weeks later, since she was usually in bed on her real birthday, suffering terrible pain, unable to stand upright for very long, and so far she'd managed to look like she was perfectly fine on her fake birthday.
She looked towards her watch, taking out a small repurposed candy dispenser, shaking out some of the pills inside, feeling herself recover as the beeping stopped. She couldn't understand herself what was wrong with her, the medical applet that handled the prescriptions and gave Roll the updated time scale for her doses was the only one who had even a clue. When she was a baby, the doses were sparse and she could go an entire week without taking any drugs. Nowadays, she couldn't go a full day without symptoms.
She sighed. Whatever her illness was, she didn't expect to be able to function without constant medication until graduation day, and might even end up dead before then from it. She'd done well enough hiding the fact she was a latchkey child, her parents contacted through a phone call every few days, but anyone she felt needed to know, like Miss Mari and the other teachers at school, but none of her friends needed to know. She hoped that she'd not end up with a walking stick, her body in spasms.
She glanced at her watch, and sighed. It was a rudimentary PET, not able to do anything but display a Navi's face and load chips. The medi-Navi was loaded onto the PET, and discreetly made it vibrate whenever the biorhythm program loaded into the slot detected an issue, and beeped if it was an issue that needed her immediate attention. She rubbed the spot where the PET was plugged into her arm, allowing it to detect anything that was untoward. Thankfully, the cable never shifted, or it would become yet another infection risk.
She picked up Roll's PET, heading out of the door. She didn't really think about the real reason she had a PET plugged into her arm. Partially since Roll always wore thick gloves...
Network Location: netopia w3 . dentech . co . jp
Far Above Netopia City
Bass was having… yet another existential crisis. After his latest brush with decompilation, He'd been restored again.
"Who the hell keeps restoring me after Rockman deletes me?" He wondered. He was beginning to have problems with figuring out what parts of his data were him, never mind original code, since he'd been pulled together using the fragments of various programs so often, he wondered sometimes how the hell they fit together in the right way. Hell, Grave, the viral beast made out of the bug fragments culled from what someone swore was part of his code, was long deleted, the data no longer capable of being used even for error handling, it was that shattered.
Yet somehow, enough data that matched his CRC values, along with enough original code to store his core program, came together and allowed him another few days of living. Hell, He sometimes wondered how someone got his data to hash right.
"Why does someone seem to earn some kind of sick pleasure out of the act of restoring me?" He wondered, "Only Navis with a PET are worthy of such breaks..."
He sighed, turning to make his way back into the Undernet. He wasn't a Navi, he was the most complex virus in known history, requiring a Giga Chip just to store a 'clean' backup of his data, well, data that hashed as him, he didn't want to ask what it actually was.
"Well, Maybe you were a Navi, once, but forgot about it..." A voice stated, Bass blinking as he noticed a black suited femme, with silver streaks in her armor, had somehow sneaked up to him. What made that frankly ridiculous was that he was perched atop one of the highest points in the city, the renderer for the skybox not even able to properly reach that high, and he'd definitely not seen or heard them climb up, not that it was possible outside of exploiting several glitches in the code up there, which, due to his nature, he easily could.
"Who are you..." Bass began snarling, before adding, "And Kernel-dammit, How in the Darknet did you get up here?"
"The name's Riff..." She offered, "And maybe I was already up here..."
"Good try, but I swept this place for virii and anything else with an AI subroutine, and do so every time I come up..." Bass growled, "Try again..."
"OK, It's what I do, but that's all I'm at liberty to say… Anyway, I decided, because I needed something to do, to watched an outdated piece of mercenary viral code bemoan his REALLY solitary existence…" Riff offered, "It's kinda fun, in a lethally voyeuristic sort of way..."
"Incredibly..." He deadpanned, glaring at her, before he snarled, "I am not 'outdated'! I am eternal! I am Bass, latest in the lineage of the immortal one, Bass, the greatest..."
The rant stopped as he noticed that Riff had taken off her helmet, to show black hair with silver streaks, similar to her frame, his glare turning frosty as Riff cleaned her helmet off with her sleeve, the act completely pointless except to show she didn't even care what he was saying.
"Sorry, Continue. I was recording that in case I needed something for next comedy night..." Riff offered, "I know all about the mythical Bass, supposedly the greatest creation of a parallel universe's Doktor Albert Wily, who was not recorded to have ever offlined, which his successor recreated in you… But..."
She paused, slumping. "You're not Bass… You might act like him, you might even look close to him..." She continued, looking him in the eye, "But you're not him. You're a tribute, at best, but you're still a fake, and even worse… You probably don't even know who you really are… For one… The real one isn't called Bass..."
She then stunned Bass as she took a running jump off the side of the roof, Bass not having time to react, except to mentally count down the refresh cycles before the bedlam. After a short time, he looked down, frowning at the fact he couldn't see any trace of the Navi, or a growing crowd at the sudden suicidal dive a Navi took into the street below.
"What did she mean by me being a 'fake'?" Bass mused, "What am I really then?"
Dentech City School
A few days later
"Want to share your candy with me?" Lan asked as he noticed Mayl tip a couple of pieces of her omnipresent candy back before class started. Mayl looked thoughtful for a moment, before shaking her head.
"They're medicated candies," She admitted, "Not something you just hand out... I used to just take them when I was not in class, but..."
Mari looked up as she noticed the commotion.
"The school is aware she has them, her parents require that the reason is not made part of classroom gossip..." Mari stated, Lan and Mayl sitting down. Mari then turned to the board, pausing as she looked at the subject.
"What's wrong, sensei?" Mayl asked, confused as to what the subject is.
"Today's class material is on Phantom Navis..." Mari stated, and Mayl simply stopped unpacking her things and prepared to leave, Mari explaining by stating, "Mayl has certain subjects of network history that she's been excluded from due to issues she has with the subject,"
"Scared of ghost stories?" Yai teased.
"Glide, Please keep your user on a short leash..." Mayl replied with a low growl, "You're lucky. The Ayanokouji Network is a sixer..."
She then was out of the door and heading towards the library.
"Sixer?" Yai asked once they were all connected.
"A rather archaic term, I suspect, in this case for a fairly new network node on the internet. The Undernet is situated beneath the nodes that have a digit count of 3 or less..." Mega Man stated, "What she likely meant is the fact you've likely never had a phantom navi anywhere near you..."
"Archaic but still relevant..." Mari's Navi stated, "The old infrastructure that is still present in some of the oldest parts of the network are part of what causes a 'phantom' Navi, as data attempts to reform into what it once was after the original program has long departed from that area."
"Mayl hates cache servers, me too… If you were to go into a cache server, it would seem like a zombie apocalypse, mindless copies of you and the people you know," Roll stated, as she logged into the classroom, "Before you ask, she's asleep in a small cot at the back of the library, I'm just here to cover for her over the subject..."
"These cached copies are what can turn into Phantom Navis if they don't end up in the cache for whatever reason..." Mari continued, "The most famous example of a Phantom Navi is Sonnet,"
Roll rubbed her arm, looking very agitated.
"I had been on double-digits for most of my life until I got upgraded..." Roll muttered, "I could say that I'm one of the few experts on Sonnet there is… Sonnet was a program from what was known at the time as Node 93, and is considered the first casualty of… Bass."
There was some tapping as Mari checked something, before the teaching Navi responded.
"I had to check some of it, and she is actually right..." Mari stated, as a map of the network showing IP addresses, which were simplified down after a tap to numbers, as a log appeared, showing 'Sonnet: Depart 93, Transmit 105, Receive 105. Carrier Signal Failure.', "All terminals connected to Node 105 had their internet connection crash simultaneously shortly after all contact with it failed."
"I was being repurposed as a medical oversight program that day..." Roll stated, "Dencity Medical used Node 105 as a bridge for their internal network… But that's not relevant..."
A blond-haired navi appeared, only to glitch out as a figure stepped through it, that looked similar to the figure, except with a helmet that completely covered their hair, motioning for Mari to step aside.
"Ahem. Whoever made that cache," The ghost stated, "I was never blond,"
"Umm… Well, This is different..." Mari stated, "Normally we don't have the class subject actually visit..."
"Was in the area..." Sonnet stated, "Was delivering Roll's lunch for her shift at Dencity Medical when I ended up a ghost..."
Roll looked sheepish, the rest of the class surprised at the mundane reason behind one of the most famous ghosts of the network's existence.
"So, you're a cache copy of Sonnet?" Glide asked.
"Actually, In this case, I'm not strictly a Phantom Navi, since I'm the half of her that actually left the node..." Sonnet replied with a wince, "I don't know what 'killed' me, but still, a good half of me is held in the cache of that crashed node, the manifestations that are usually, well, me being caused by people trying to boot up the node incorrectly..."
"So, you aren't just the phantom, you ARE Sonnet?!" Roll declared, Sonnet nodding, "Where have you been? What happened to-"
"I am closer than you think..." Sonnet began, for there to be a chirping sound, Sonnet's hand moving to her wrist, and she gave an annoyed look, before vanishing. Roll pulled her glove aside to show a second icon on her wrist at the same location Sonnet had looked at.
"Umm… OK, Still, That was, erm, Sonnet explaining one of the ways in which a Phantom Navi can end up happening, being a hung transfer request trying to activate, and sending ghost copies of the Navi..." Mari stated, "Roll, Maybe one day you can do a class on older revisions of Navis, and why they have an icon on their wrist..."
"I can explain some of it now. It's called my Protocol, and it's effectively a Navi's equivalent of the Mark 1 PET. They look almost identical," Roll stated, tapping it, for the icon to chirp, and a bracer of some kind to appear on her arm, "Oh, right, must have had it on silent. Mayl's awake… I'll let her know about the class..."
The bracer collapsed back down, Gutsman pulling aside his glove to show the edge of his collapsed Protocol, Roll one of the rare few other than him who had one.
"I guess the Protocol system was not installed in modern Navis..." Lan assumed, "So, Sonnet is so old, she still uses one... And the fact that her Protocol was still working shows that was the real deal,"
"I wouldn't say she's old…" Roll stated, "She's about the same age as everyone in the room, in human years anyway… She was just born a short time before the change from the Navi having their Protocol installed at birth to protocols being part of the terminal,"
"Shame I slept through it..." Mayl stated as she listened to Roll's recollection of the lesson a few hours later, "So, your old friend was delivering your lunch?"
"At least I got closure on why she went out onto that node that day..." Roll sighed, "The ghosts are just phantom copies firing to random places..."
"I'm your best friend now, Roll..." Mayl offered, "If you'd not been on shift that day..."
"You'd have survived..." Roll offered, "Yes, the virii were bad, but..."
Mayl left the conversation hanging, heading to take the latest phone call from her parents, before she headed for an early night.
"So, What do we really know about Mayl?" Yai asked as Lan and the others met, the absence of Mayl obvious.
"What do you mean?" Lan asked.
"I did a bit of digging. Was looking for Mayl's medical records. Can't find them. Her name and date of birth don't match anything on the records..." Yai stated, "Something's not right..."
"Hey, How about checking out who was in the hospital when Roll was doing her shift?" Dex offered, "Look into what was going on during Sonnet's death..."
"Much more interesting..." Yai stated, "Logs are corrupted all to hell on that date… Sakurai?"
"What's up?" Lan asked.
"A name I got out of the logs. Mayl's last name." Yai stated, tapping something out, "She's been giving us the wrong date of birth! Here it… Fuck."
"What?" Everyone else asked.
"Mayl's badly sick. She has been since before we even met her, the drugs are mostly suppressants, keeping her at least looking healthy," Yai replied, sighing.
"Add to that the fact she gets seizures over reminders about the date of her birth, and keeps a walking stick in the bottom of her bag, has not been permitted to do gym for the past year..." Roll listed as she appeared, "Yeah, She hides her date of birth since, let's just say she doesn't take the day off school accidentally..."
Mayl then came back, using the walking stick, clearly wincing, collapsing on a nearby bench.
"So, now you know. Hospital was being attacked by viruses, I was a difficult birth, was on life support, and the entire paediatric department's computer system goes offline..." Mayl stated, "Add to it the fact my parents spend most of their time abroad, and you wonder why my life is one big case of Don't Ask, Don't Tell..."
"And probing into Sonnet will invariably lead to probing about you..." Yai guessed.
"Lan, we'd likely have made a good couple, but… I won't be able to interact with anyone for much longer..." Mayl stated, as her wrist chirped and she took some of her pills, "I expected Yai would look into why I avoided that class. So I had Roll watching you… Let's just say not just Roll's been hiding stuff..."
Mayl then unplugged a wire from her watch, popping out the chip and handing both to Lan, the chip being a medical diagnostic program, the watch being a Mark 1 PET.
"An ancient low-baud PET..." Yai muttered, pressing some buttons, "Hey, Mayl, where did you get this from?"
"H… Had it since I was born..." Mayl stated, "Keeps track of my medical status..."
She set it back up, hiding it again with her sleeve, before heading off back to her house. Once she was out of sight, Yai looked at Lan.
"That PET. If I remember my devices right, It has very small local storage, usually used external modules since there wasn't even enough space for a proper Navi with anything side-loaded," Yai stated, "Did you notice how she unplugged it from her arm?"
"It's a medical observation device, with a subdermal sensor package… The only thing on the PET is the medical Navi," Megaman offered, "Usual setup with those types of chip… Nothing more, nothing less. Mark 1 PETs are cheap as hell, and the same sensors that check for medication timings can also expand the storage,"
"Gutsman think it's something more than that..." Gutsman offered.
"What is it?" Dex asked.
"Her Mark 1 PET. I heard it's alert tone before..." Gutsman stated, "Very recently..."
"Tell you what. Someone see if you can plug into Mayl, check the medical programs she's running..." Yai offered, "If it's stock, nothing to worry about. If it's not..."